Vietnam War: justice dismisses a Franco-Vietnamese against 14 multinationals responsible for the toxic "Agent Orange"

The court of Evry (Essonne) did not respond to the requests of Tran To Nga, a 79-year-old woman, who was suing 14 companies including the German-American giant Bayer-Monsanto in civil proceedings as a victim of the chemical compound, "Agent Orange", an ultra-toxic product spilled on forests during the Vietnam War.

Born in 1942 in French Indochina, Tran To Nga was involved in the independence movement in northern Vietnam and had also covered the war (1955-1975) as a journalist.

She claims to have been exposed to this chemical product spread by tens of millions of liters by the American army between 1962 and 1971. This defoliant spilled on the forests and the Vietnamese and Laotian cultures was then aimed at preventing the progression of the Communist guerrillas.

Agent Orange spraying during the Viet Nam War Underwood Archives / Leemage

The Evry court ruled in favor of the defenders of multinationals sued.

The court considered that they had “acted on order and on behalf of the American state” and that they could avail themselves of “jurisdictional immunity”.

Indeed, this principle of international law establishes that no sovereign State can subject another sovereign State to its jurisdiction.

A person of private law (here, in this case the assigned multinationals) can benefit from it “when it intervenes in the accomplishment of an act on order or on behalf of this State, constituting an act of sovereignty.

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"It's not for me that I'm fighting"

The lawyer for the American company Monsanto (absorbed in 2018 by the German company Bayer), Maître Jean-Daniel Bretzner, had pleaded that a French court was not competent to judge the action of a sovereign foreign state in the framework of a "defense policy" in wartime.

"Madame Tran To Nga circumvents the difficulty" by attacking private law companies rather than the American state, the lawyer had launched during his plea in January.

But according to lawyers for the Franco-Vietnamese, these companies "responded to a call for tenders" and therefore did not act under the constraint of the American government.

In addition, according to them, “the recommendations made by the American administration did not require the production of a product containing a level of dioxin as high as that of Agent Orange.

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Since 2014, Tran To Nga has been leading a legal battle against some of the companies that produced this compound, claiming to suffer from pathologies "characteristic" of exposure to this herbicide.

Suffering from type 2 diabetes with an “extremely rare” insulin allergy, she also contracted two tuberculosis, had cancer and one of her daughters died of a heart defect.

She announced that she wanted to appeal this decision.

Indeed, this woman intends to participate in the international recognition of the crime of "ecocide": "It is not for me that I am fighting" but "for my children" and "these millions of victims" who have suffered lasting effects. of “Agent Orange,” she said at trial.